Your current operation
| Option | Monthly cost | Cost / job | Savings / job | Profit / job | Margin | Break-even |
|---|
Break-even is an estimate based only on the fixed and per-job costs you enter. Profit and margin use the revenue per job you enter above; review contracts, taxes, fuel, minimums, and service quality separately.
Common questions
Why does one scenario break even at zero jobs and another need four?
Break-even only exists when a scenario charges a fixed fee the baseline does not. In the built-in example, the bulk supplier adds a $100/month fee but drops the per-job cost from $120 to $90 — a $30/job saving, so it takes ceil($100 ÷ $30) = 4 jobs before that fee is paid back. The subcontractor scenario has no fixed fee at all, only a $5/job saving, so there is nothing to recoup and it shows as cheaper starting from job one.
What does “Not cheaper” mean in the break-even column?
It means the scenario loses on both numbers: its per-job cost is higher than your current variable cost and its fixed cost is the same or higher, so no volume of jobs ever makes it win — there is no break-even point to reach, not just a distant one. Compare the “Cost / job” and “Savings / job” columns for that row: a negative savings figure is why.
What does “Below N jobs/mo” mean?
The opposite trade from a fixed-fee break-even: this scenario has a lower fixed cost than your baseline but a higher per-job cost, so it wins at low volume on the fixed-cost saving alone and loses that lead once enough jobs push the higher per-job rate past it. It is cheaper only while your monthly job count stays below the number shown — run more jobs than that and the current operation (or a scenario with a lower per-job cost) wins instead. A no-minimum, pay-per-job vendor compared against a leased or subscription-priced one is the usual shape of this case.
Why enter fixed cost and per-job cost separately instead of one blended rate?
Because they behave differently as volume changes. A monthly minimum or lease payment (fixed) gets cheaper per job the more jobs you run; a per-unit supplier price or mileage rate (variable) does not move with volume at all. Blending them into one number hides which lever actually changes if your job count changes next quarter.
At the default 20 jobs/month, which option actually wins?
The bulk supplier: $1,900/month total versus the current $2,400, for a cost of $95 per job against a $120 baseline — a $25/job saving even after the $100 fixed fee. The subcontractor option is cheaper per job than today but not as cheap as the bulk supplier at this volume, which is exactly why the table ranks all three rather than only showing yes/no.
Is my vendor pricing uploaded anywhere?
No. The comparison runs entirely in your browser; nothing is sent to a server. “Save draft” writes your scenarios to this browser's local storage and restores them the next time you open the page, “Copy share link” encodes the same fields into the page's URL fragment so you can hand the comparison to someone else, and the optional usage counter records only which buttons were used, never your rates or volumes.